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Settlement Good News for MotorolaV710 Owners

Posted by ScuttleMonkey on from the sometimes-the-good-guys-win dept.

bluebanzai writes "When hordes of people bought up the Motorola V710 upon its release a year ago, Slashdot readers may remember many impressive features including the cutting edge Bluetooth features (picture/mp3 transfer, wireless syncing) as described on Motorola's website. However, when used with the popular Verizon Wireless cell phone service provider, many Bluetooth features were sadly crippled (apart from a wireless headset) because OBEX features had been purposely disabled by Verizon. Hundreds of people donated to a hacker rewards program to unlock the full features of the phone to the tune of $3000, but was never fully successful. Well, one year later, the Los Angeles Superior Court (PDF Warning) and Verizon have announced the initial steps of a Class Action Lawsuit that appears to be influenced by the user community allowing everyone who bought it before the start of 2005 a few options for compensation--including a refund up to the purchase price of another phone which, interestingly enough, is a lot easier to hack."

4 of 210 comments (clear)

  1. Re:Cutting edge? by WhoDey · · Score: 2, Funny

    I've never met anyone with a phone that has cut-down features either.

    Try closing the open /. window and walking out of your house. You'd be amazed what you learn when you meet actual people.

  2. Re:How about... by meringuoid · · Score: 5, Funny
    How about Verizon just stop crippling their customers and unlock the locked features?

    If they did that, then you could easily create your own wallpapers and mp3 ringtones on your PC and transfer them to your telephone by Bluetooth. This is obviously wrong, and the sort of thing only pirates would do. Therefore the phone company locks down the features, and you can then pay a modest sum of money for professionally-created multimedia products of much better quality. Isn't the Company great, looking out for you like that?

    --
    Real Daleks don't climb stairs - they level the building.
  3. Re:How about... by maxwell+demon · · Score: 5, Funny
    How about Verizon just stop crippling their customers and unlock the locked features?

    They don't just cripple the phones, they also cripple their customers? I didn't know that they are that bad ... :-)
    --
    The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
  4. Re:thats the problem with US phone networks by karnal · · Score: 3, Funny

    The way your sig played into your comment was priceless:


    Grump
    Unlocked Siemens S40, Mot V400.
    Unlocked half my family's nokia phones.
    --
    still looking for a wife...

    --
    Karnal